A Series Voltage Regulator based on Quasi-Sinusoidal Waveform to Achieve Smart-Grid Requirements

Smart-Grid has emerged as an important requirement to achieve high quality voltage supplied to customers. Within the context of general power quality indicators, a common problem found in distribution systems is the unbalanced voltage. Usually, to solve this type of disturbance, a step voltage regulator can be used to obtain voltage amplitude compensation. However, for many applications, this device does not fulfill the required smart-grid needs. This can be attributed to the slow time response and the inefficacy in compensating unbalanced voltages with phase jumps. Focusing on this subject, this paper proposes a rapid response electronic voltage regulator based on a multilevel series voltage compensator topology. Using a quasi-sinusoidal waveform, the proposed device balances the supply voltages while keeping the compensated voltages within the harmonic distortion limits.